The movie was excellent. I do not believe that it makes TPM a better movie however. Parts, yes, but not the whole. AOTC had most of what we want is SW: Action, politics, the dark side, yoda, etc. There were some problems with it, but ALL movies have issues. If I were to rank it, it would be under ESB and ANH (A STRONG number 3, one that could increase with further viewings).

The battle with Dooku was fast but excellent, since it seemed to fit better with the duels in the classic trilogy. Dooku himself was teriffic, and I hope to see his character expanded upon in EP III.

The Love story was not as bad as some feared. Obi was great, as was anakin.

On the downside, I wanted to see more of Palpatine, and I'm not satisfied with Jar Jar in the senate. At the very least, another senator should have spoke in favor of Jar Jar's plan. As it stands now, it appears that Jar Jar created the Empire. That is a lame prospect indeed (although, we see he was manipulated, but still...)

The thing that made me laugh the most was seeing Yoda and the "good guys" commanding the stormtroopers... how Ironic!!!

Somewhere else in here, I expressed how disappointed I was by AOTC. I won't re-hash that at all, mostly because intelligent, balanced expressions of any critique of this movie result in "gusher vs basher" behavior comparable to AICN.

ANYWAY, I saw the movie again today, and much of my disappointment is gone! The bad is still bad, but it seems (for me) that once I expected it, I could deal with it and just soak the whole movie up. My biggest problem last week was that when it was bad (IMHO), it hung in my mind like an aftertaste, keeping me from enjoying the good that was coming next. Today, with no more preconceptions about AOTC, I found it much more enjoyable. Last week, I rated it at the bottom of the list. Today, it's jumped a few notches, maybe above ROTJ.

I'd encourage anyone who does not consider themselves a basher, and who is tired of being told that they are one (or "too old" or "nitpicky" or "a dumba**") to blow these children here off before they cloud the experience further. Go see it again, knowing what you now know, and I think that you'll feel a little better.

At this point, though, I'm going to be leaving TF.N for a long time. One, I'm tired of how rude folks get online. I am so tired of the whole "true fan" lie. The "evil gushers" out there who simply can't engage in intelligent discourse, who dare tell people to leave the forum (when they have a May '02, no less), and who are obsessed with how SW stands in the box office, against SpiderMan and LOTR... you may think you get SW, but you've got a lot to learn about being civilized.

Two, I've definitely decided that I want to be completely spoiler free for Ep 3. Just can't be done here, even if you try.

Finally, I remember how back in the 80s (because I'm *sooooo* old), how fandom started to cloud my view of the art. Too many politics, too much hate, too much immaturity. This is my last chance to see a SW film as nothing more than that (as much as the media could posibly allow it), so I'm gonna go for it. TF.N and fandom used to enhance my SW experience, but not any more.

I had the curious situation of going into the movie expecting to hate it. What's that I spake, you say? Well TPM left a permanent gag reflex - sorry. It had its moments.. I like Darth Maul and loved the duel at the end, but the rest.. let's not go into it.

But I was amazed at how entertained I was by AOTC! My worries, preconceptions.. everything floated away.. I reached that point so many people are on.. the amazing feeling.. "I am seeing Star Wars.. but it's all new!!" Like when I was 9 and we all went to see Jedi for a birthday party. Okay it's a little different now but I certainly had a good time.

That said, I will never understand the "Star Wars vs. Spiderman.." or worse yet, "Lord of the Rings sucks.. cause it's not Star Wars.. bla bla bla".. whatever. Who cares? Why are so many people here so obsessed with how much money the movie makes? Do any of them see a dime of it?

I know, I know, it seems to validate the movie and send a message to the critics... maybe that is true in some regard.. But when it gets nasty, all this talk of Lord of the Rings "trolls" and flame wars about Spiderman, everything sounds silly. It sounds really silly since I was here three years ago when we went through the same thing with Titanic.. and at that time, I started to see how ugly these things can be.. it somehow manifested itself into a hatred of all things Titanic, including Leo Dicaprio, who apparently was hissed and ridiculed by Star Wars fans for no apparent reason other than the fact that he was in an epic movie that outperformed Star Wars (at the time)... What a weird world..

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!!!!
Yeah, I loved it. The romance dialog was horrible, truly some of the worst in the history of film, let alone the history of Star Wars. However this was not enought for me to give it less than a raving "Awesome - Two Thumbs Up" review!
I guess you probably have discerned the film's biggest secret, but I didn't catch it until I saw it the second time. Most of my friends didn't catch it the first time around either. In case you haven't picked up on it yet, consider these two questions;

1.) What planet do the Senate of the Republic and the Jedi Council reside upon since episode one?
2.) What would cause Yoda to say "...blind,we are, if we could not see this..." and Mace Windu concur that "...our ability to use the Force is diminished..." ?

Ten-to-one you figured this out by the first shot of your second viewing, but the answer still warps my mind with excitement for the next film, and leaves me in awe of Lucas as I never have been before.

Here we go;

a.) The senate and the Jedi Temple are located on the planet
Coruscant. As you may remember, this is the 'city' planet from
Episode One, similar to the sand planet (tatooine), the water
planet (naboo), the ice planet (hoth), the forest moon (endor)
etc, etc, etc.

(As they say on Sesame Street - "One of these things is not like
the other, one of these things just doesn't belong...")

b.) The Jedi are losing their ability to 'see' with the force due
to their proximity to the activities of the Dark Side.
c.) Count Dooku / Darth Tyrannus flees to the Death Star to
deliver the plans to Darth Sidious.
d.) The next series of shots show the Jedi in their chambers, and
senator Palpatine sending out the fleet for war (alongside
senator ORGANA from Alderon).
e.) If Senator Palpatine is on Coruscant (the city planet), and if
he is also Darth Sidious, then Darth Sidious is also on
Coruscant.
f.) THEREFORE - Coruscant IS THE DEATH STAR!!!!

"...blind we are if we could not see this..."

Consequently, the Jedi are living in the heart of darkness, on the ultimate weapon.
Watch it again - it's right there from the very first shot, staring you right in the face, and it is awesome.
I understand your possible reluctance to accept this, but fan after fan that I've shared this with have come back to me after their next viewing saying, "it's all right there! How did I miss it?" Mainly because Lucas is a Genius.
The way that this whole scenario messes with us is due to our preconceived notions that the death star was a 'ground up' construct. What we are learning is that it is a CONVERTED planet. This is very similar to the way that we once envisioned that the Empire had had come along and defeated the Republic. Instead we now know that it grew out of the Republic - it essentially IS the Republic, transformed to the Dark Side.
This also shows just how incredible an evil genius Palpatine is, and just how long his plans have been coalescing. The 'city planet' of Coruscant must have been hundreds of years in the making. Palpatine, at some point had caught a vision that fused his Sith powers with his political savvy. He fostered the trade federation as a political force in order to develop the planet into the Death Star, one development project at a time. The trade federation probably never knew that it was developing this weapon, only that they were growing a very effective profit machine by fostering community infrastructure development contracts along with labor unions and a pure love of capitalism/materialism ( which all Jedi must renounce ). While Nute Gunray may have some inkling of the bigger picture, I'm sure that he doesn't know nearly the scope of this evil plot. It will be the clone army that finally becomes the workforce that subjugates the trade federation and makes all of these plans overt.
Palpatine has been

Hmm.. interesting interpretation of the origins of the death star. I think that a converted planet would have been a GREAT concept but the DS (mark I) was the size of a moon (not a planet), Coruscant was shown at the end of ROTJ and DS (mark II), bigger than the original, is clearly completely clone-made.....

On second screening of film and reading of the book, I just want to state that I thank the maker (GL) for NOT including the "family" scenes. The actors cast (well, two of 'em), though good in the other stuff they've done in Australia (well, Claudia Karvan, anyway) could not have survived icky dialogue (and imagine the backlash if the "Padme sacrificing her child-bearing years for a career" stuff was actually verbalised)and further "Sound of Music" scenery, IMHO.

Personally I loved the movie from the get go but your comments regarding the attitudes the sometimes prevail the boards is very accurate. I love the 'fun' threads but some of the flame wars really bring me down.

I'm about 50/50 on whether to go spoiler free for Ep3. I'll probably just look at the posters and stuff next time around.

Hey Jedi 678, It's pretty ironic that you say that u love the whole romance thing. I watched the movie like twice, And I noticed that most of the girls that watched the movie have the exact same feeling.(NOt that all women refer to SW at this perspective) but that is all they talked about. "ooh, that grassy place where they were rolling around was like so so beautiful." 9Quoting one of my friends) and it's alright, I just found that pretty funny. My thoughts on the movie was that it was the coolest movie of the year. I don't know though whether or not to rate it higher the ESB, It has been my favorite movie ever sine I first watched the trilogy...anyone wanna help me out in deciding which one is a better movie??

Ok I haven't read the entire topic as yet (too long!) so this might already have been mentioned but here's a quick question:

I read that Jango headbutting Obi Wan was cut from the UK version because of Ratings complications. I'm in Ireland and it wasn't cut, much to my surprise and delight! Was it cut in England/UK showings?

Good posts by Darth Scorpio and Smooth_as_Lando. In fact, I was in almost the exact same boat as you Smooth_as_Lando, I went into AOTC expecting it to be crap because TPM had disappointed me so much and I was quite disillusioned about the prequels. But AOTC blew me away so much, I love it!!

I rank it just below Empire but I've read a whole load of negative comments about it which makes me wonder whether I'm being generous with my praise. I have to go see it again to make sure I wasn't just imagining it to be as good as I thought first time around....

I don't think Coruscant is the death star, it doesnt make sense, how do they gat a planet to move around the galaxy? Didn't the death star act as a large ship, it sure doesnt look anything like coruscant.

the best seen was at the first when they were chaceing that object that tryed to posion one of the best name ever in a movie Pat May! dang may Jago was great as well thanks I also likeed the whole fight seen in the area the yoda fight was well done as well I weill leve you with these last wards

Well, I just got back from seeing "The Empire Strikes Back", and man did it suck!! George Lucas has lost his touch... big time! Now I grew up on the original trilogy; as a kid, I used to dream of being just like Anakin Skywalker--even after he turned to the dark side. I grew up with him, as well as the other characters, and I was also stunned by the complexity of this galaxy far far away. Episode 3, easily the darkest in the saga continues to be my favorite--you do not get more dramatic than Anakin's turn to the dark side--how awful that we had to wait 20 years before we got the next installment!!

Episode 4, A New Hope, was in many ways a victim of its own hype. True, it didn't live up to the originals, but I still thought it was an okay movie. Probably the thing that annoyed me the most was Obi-wan lying to Luke. It was TOTALLY against his character; the obi-wan I grew up with would never lie, not even to protect someone from the truth. Also, killing him off was a bad move. He was my favorite character, and his potential in this new franchise was amazing.

But this latest installment, Episode 5, The Empire Strikes Back (what kind of lame title is that?) was a stinking pile of rubbish, with an isolated moment or two that brought back memories of the old glory days of Star Wars. Let me begin with the few things I liked.

1. I like Han Solo. He's probably the only good actor in the whole thing, apart from Sir Alec Guinness whose character gets reduced to nothing more than a cameo where he does his best Ewan McGregor impersonation.

2. Darth Vader is still an awesome villain who is put to far better use in this one than the last time around. I loved the way he kept killing Imperial Officers. He?s still not as cool as Count Dooku, though.

And that's about it. There were moments here and there that were enjoyable, but they were quickly lost and forgotten. And now, on to the bad...

1. Why oh why did they create that whole sub-plot at the beginning where Luke gets abducted by the ice creature? It was uninteresting, slowed the forward advancement of the plot down pointlessly, and besides, we didn't even get the see the darn thing! And why the heck didn't it just kill Luke in the first place instead of leaving him unconscious with his lightsabre conveniently beside him? It's unbelievable plot-holes like this that pull me right out of the movie, and this movie is full of them!

2. The Battle of Hoth was okay, but I constantly found myself wishing for the epic battles of the Clone Wars. It was just a by-the-numbers battle, lacking any sense of danger or excitement. And why on earth would the empire bother sending down those dumb clumsy walkers when they could have just blasted to rebel base from orbit? Or they could have sent down fighter craft to take it out. And how convenient that the rebels just so happened to have those cable things installed on their craft.

3. The plot slowed down far too much during the middle part of the movie, and didn't really pick up much after that. Hiding in the asteroid field was pretty much just an excuse for Han and Leia to share some romance scenes. And how painful they were! "My hands are dirty" "Mine are too, what are you afraid of?" How lame. And that stupid cliched romance where they act like they hate each other to cover up their true feelings has been done a million times before. Get some originality, George!!

4. Luke and Leia's incestual kiss was disgusting. Lucas is a sick old man.

5. Yoda was a shadow of his former glory. For some strange reason they started using a fake-looking puppet that had none of the dynamic expressions, emotions or character of the old Yoda. And the lip-synch was off the whole time. And his appearance is a painful indication of how Lucas is pandering to the kids. I'm sure you'll cringe too when you see the great former master acting like a hyperactive child when he first meets Luke. Most of the adults in the audience groaned through the whole thing, but the kids seemed to love it.

"Luke and Leia's incestual kiss was disgusting. Lucas is a sick old man. "

Remember that the fact that they were brother and sister was not revealed until ROTJ. The reason they did this in the first place was most likely because they wanted to abolish the love triangle. Remember Luke is the hero and the hero usually should get the girl....Besides now Luke has an adequate excuse for losing Leia to Han. I bet Lucas came up with this later on, after he decided Leia and Luke should kiss....And this was also probably meant to heat up things to show that Luke was still in the running atleast for a little while...Now is Lucas really gonna just leave Luke out in the cold? NO. He makes it so that it's Politically correct that Luke and Leia have nothing to do with each other sexually....Quite frankly I think it was a smooth move.

What are you talking about? We knew they were brother and sister when they were born in Episode III, back in 1983 or so!

Another thing I hated about ESB was the continued presence of Chewy. I had hoped that after the negative backlash against him in the last movie, Lucas might choose to scale down his role. But unfortunately his role became even more important and annoying. And I STILL couldn't understand a word he said!

I have said this before but will say it again... a friend of mine who HATED AOTC (I mean he said it was the worst movie he had ever seen) saw it again and loved it.

He said "I don't know what it was the first time I saw it but it was like... I had no idea what I was watching. The second time I felt more comfortable with seeing a new Star Wars movie and it just felt different."

He still thinks there are bad parts etc but he thinks it is much better than TPM.

[EDIT:]

Darth Shade... I just want to compliment you on your genius OT posts... that is great. I love it.

I can't explain it, but AotC just didn't seem like as finely crafted a film on a technical or artistic level. The SUBJECT MATTER as such was a lot more "fanboy-friendly", but the editing, pacing, etc just seemed...Off. The whole movie seemed just rushed to me. Nothing lasted as long as it should have for maximum effect. The love story was rushed. The Jango/Obi-Wan fight was far too short. Jango vs. Mace was a shadow of the original scene as storyboarded and was over before it was really possible to get into it properly or care. The lightsaber battle at the end was VERY rushed. Obi-Wan and Anakin were dispatched before you knew it. All that fuss about Yoda with a lightsaber and it seemed like it was over in less than a minute!

I consider it the most unsatisfying battle sequence of the entire saga. Any and all of the other duels were vastly superior because they at least gave you time to enjoy the proceedings. Even the lightning-fast Duel of the Fates seemed noticably longer (and not just because of the cutaways, I'm convinced that more time was genuinally allocated to it). I have similar complaints about almost every scene!

Taken out of context, pretty much anything in the film seems incredible, but when it's actually there MOVING AND FLOWING TOGETHER, it just comes off awkward and rushed and totally throws the whole thing off. The story was great, the production values were top notch, and I think the actors all did a great job, but it was still was dead on arrival once it completed the trip from the editing room to the theater. It was like watching a beautiful ballerina stumble clumsily through her routine after downing a fifth of vokda.

AotC just didn't stop to smell the roses enough for me. It was too much too fast and the compromise was presenting it all uniformly unsatisfyingly.

Still, it was Star Wars, and I know the film will improve with rewatching, when I have more to to focus on individual things that were there without worrying about missing the big picture. That's what DVD is for. Still, the whole experience of watching the film just isn't as enjoyable for me as with the others. My top five right now:

1. TPM
2. ANH
3. ESB
4. RotJ
5. AotC

Pretty sad when I anticipated AotC taking the number one or two slot. The pacing and editing were just that bad, though. Alas.

I'm a HUGE SW fan ... have been since I can remember. I grew up on Star Wars, seen the movies countless times, know every line, every scene ... I love all that is Star Wars. Why? Because of the way those movies make me feel ... as soon as the logo hits the screen I got a big grin going from ear to ear ... I laugh at the same jokes, I get excited about seeing the same scenes, I love the characters, the story, the look ... etc. every time I see any of the movies I love them more and more.
I don't nit-pick about things either, I love them just as they are ... Ewoks and all. (I don't even mind that Millenium Falcon's internal and external dimensions make absolutelly no sense, among other things).
I actually liked TPM, it had it's problems but I was so happy to see anything new SW after such a long time that I couldn't get enough of it.
AOTC is unfortunatelly a different story. The story is great, the events that are unfolding in front of our eyes are great, everything is falling into place and we're witnessing the start of it all ... and that's amazing. BUT ... the script, dialogue, (talent) direction and acting/delivery are soooo bad that I just can not get over it and it ruins it all for me. As I was watching it, I felt uncomfortable 'cuz some scenes and delivery would make me cringe. No SW movie is Amadeus or Apocalypse Now ... and they are not made to be, but AOTC looked and felt like the most expensive 3rd rate "made for TV" movie with soap opera stars.
And all the actors are amazing actors: Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman ... etc. What the **** happened? Which brings me to my point: direction. George Lucas is an amazing visionary, producer, story/idea man, innovator ... but he's not a director. That is painfully evident in this movie. He is THE creator of Star Wars but a good director, he is not.

I have to go see it again, but I doubt the experience will be any less dissapointing.

Razorback: Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was especially difficult for me, considering that ESB is my favorite of the saga (followed by AOTC).

Jar-jar: While I respect your opinion, I found nothing wrong with the pacing and editing of AOTC at all. If anything, the first half was too slow, but the second half was just perfect. I agree, I would have liked some of the battles to have gone for longer, but what we got was pretty awesome.

Anyway, I disagree with you. I think AOTC was better than TPM on every level. Here's my order.